Samuel L Myers
Biographic Data
| ID | 120535 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Samuel L Myers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Samuel L |
| FAMILY NAME | Myers |
| SIGNATURE | MYERS S L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3659-3026 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 194 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Changes in nutrition-related health outcomes following a minimum wage increase
Minimum wage laws have the potential to promote economic stability and may have beneficial health effects. This study evaluated nutrition-related effects of a city ordinance increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Minneapolis, Minnesota (MN). The study followed a cohort of low-wage workers in Minneapolis (n = 490) and a comparison group with no minimum wage increase in Raleigh, North Carolina (n = 479) from 2018 to 2022. Main outcomes inclu…
Setting the Record Straight on Racial Wealth Inequality
The racial wealth gap in the United States is the object of much misrepresentation and misunderstanding. Our paper is intended to provide a corrective. We will address how the mainstream economic view of the drivers of racial disparities in wealth is a human capital view that promotes anti-Black and personal responsibility narratives while ignoring the significance of the racially uneven transmission of resources across generations. It also fails…
Early results of a natural experiment evaluating the effects of a local minimum wage policy on the diet-related health of low-wage workers, 2018–2020
Objective: The current study presents results of a midpoint analysis of an ongoing natural experiment evaluating the diet-related effects of the Minneapolis Minimum Wage Ordinance, which incrementally increases the minimum wage to $15/h. Design: A difference-in-difference (DiD) analysis of measures collected among low-wage workers in two U.S. cities (one city with a wage increase policy and one comparison city). Measures included employment-relat…
Native American “deaths of despair” and economic conditions
Research Note: Citation Bias and the Economics of Race and Crime Literature
This research note investigates citation bias using probabilities of zero citations, total citations, and citations per year since publication from Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar for all 759 articles on the economics of race and crime as extracted from EconLit for the period 1970–2020 and reported in previous work by Mason et al. Our citation analysis considers two main variables of interest: (a) whether the article was published in t…
Occupational Segregation And Hypertension Inequity: The Implication Of The Inverse Hazard Law Among Healthcare Workers
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s41996-022-00098-5
Native American Age at Death in the USA
In Memoriam: Samuel L. Myers (1919–2021)
Racial Differences in Time at Work Not Working
Racial differences in effort at work, if they exist, can potentially explain race-based wage/earnings disparities in the labor market. The authors estimate specifications of time spent on non-work activities at work by Black and White males and females with data from the American Time Use Survey. Estimates reveal that trivially small differences occur between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White males in time spent not working while on the j…
Introduction to the Issue
john a. powell a , Samuel L. Myers Jr. b , Susan T. Gooden c , Introduction to the Issue, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 7, No. 1, Plessy v. Ferguson and the Legacy of “Separate but Equal” After 125 Years (February 2021), pp. 1-17
Determinants of Racial Disparities in Female Incarceration Rates, 2000–2018
In The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, the National Research Council documents the large and persistent racial disparities in imprisonment that accompanied the more than quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate since the 1980s. Largely unnoticed by policy makers and opinion leaders in recent years is an unprecedented decrease in the number of African American women incarcerated at the same time that the number of white women in pr…
The Economics of Race and Crime
The relationship between crime and the economy has received too little attention from researchers. This volume remedies that deficit, resurrecting several classic writings on this elusive topic by and about blacks, and presenting new contributions by researchers at the frontier of work on the subject. Among the landmark articles included are W.E.B. Dubois' famous examination of crime in Philadelphia, an analysis of black criminal behavior by Walt…
Foundation Giving and Economics Research Productivity at HBCUs: Empirical Evidence from the Koch Foundation
Existing research on funding disparities between historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and non-HBCUs primarily focuses on government funding and pays little attention to foundation giving. This paper helps to fill this gap by examining the effects of funding by the Charles Koch Foundation—a major funder of economics research in the USA—on the economics research productivity at HBCUs. Using data from the foundation’s tax forms, the …
Bringing Research on Race and Crime Into the 21st Century: Reflections From Over the Years
A reflection on the changes in research on race and crime in the economics profession
The Economic Benefits of Reducing Racial Disparities in Health: The Case of Minnesota
This paper estimates the benefits of eliminating racial disparities in mortality rates and work weeks lost due to illness. Using data from the American Community Survey (2005−2007) and Minnesota vital statistics (2011−2015), we explore economic methodologies for estimating the costs of health disparities. The data reveal large racial disparities in both mortality and labor market non-participation arising from preventable diseases and illnesses. …
Introduction to the Special Edition of the Review of Black Political Economy on Revisiting the Kerner Commission Report
Revisiting the work of the Kerner Commission after 50 years offers the opportunity to explore two unresolved research and policy issues. First, many of the racial disparities that promoted widespread disorder and violent protests in 1967-1968 remain today. Second, there is the embarrassment of not having any African American researchers on the technical staff examining the causes and consequences of racial disparities in economic outcomes. This s…
Race Neutrality: Rationalizing Remedies to Racial Inequality
There are wide racial disparities in virtually every sphere of economic life. African American workers earn less than whites. They are more likely to be denied loans than whites. Minority-owned businesses are less likely to win lucrative bids on state and federal contracts than are white male owned businesses. Black children are more likely than whites to be reported to child protective services for neglect or abuse. There are even huge dispariti…
Racial Disparities, Homeownership, and Mortgage Lending in the Post-Great Recession Period: The Case of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area
The Kerner Commission Report Fifty Years Later: Revisiting the American Dream
Susan T. Gooden, Samuel L. Myers, The Kerner Commission Report Fifty Years Later: Revisiting the American Dream, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 6, The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report (September 2018), pp. 1-17
Competitive Swimming and Racial Disparities in Drowning
This paper provides compelling evidence of an inverse relationship between competitive swimming rates and drowning rates using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on fatal drowning rates and membership rates from USA Swimming, the governing organization of competitive swimming in the United States. Tobit and Poisson regression models are estimated using panel data by state from 1999-2007 separately for males, females, African Am…
The Production of Black Ph.D.'s in Economics at Harvard University, 1905–1955
Harvard University's Economics Department produced some of the leading African American economists between World War I and the Korean War. This essay explores the factors that contributed to this accomplishment and documents the career trajectories of the six blacks who obtained the Doctorate in Economics from Harvard University during the period 1905-1955. The analysis reveals the pivotal roles of the Rosenwald Fund, Classical High Schools, Blac…
Does affirmative action in Chinese college admissions lead to mismatch? Educational quality and the relative returns to a baccalaureate degree for minorities in China
Century to gauge the impacts of advantges afforded to ethnic minority group members in admissions to colleges and univerities. It specifically addresses a variant of the mismatch hypothesis that alleges that minority students sorted into higher ranked universities are worse off than equallty qualified minorities attending lower-ranked universities. In particular, we examine the expected earnings of minorities vs non-minorities attending elite vs …
Black-White Disparities in Test Scores: Distributional Characteristics
This paper investigates the distributional characteristics of racial differences in mathematics achievement, with particular attention to the potential influence of unexplained, and possibly unwarranted, racial differentials in rates of school suspension. It is well known that black students consistently score lower than whites on achievement tests, on average, even after controlling for family and schooling factors. Using data from the National …
Bad Credit and Intergroup Differences in Loan Denial Rates
Research has found wide disparities in loan denial rates among different racial/ethnic groups. Two competing explanations for these gaps arise. One argument is that these disparities result from underlying racial disparities in credit worthiness. A competing view is that the disparities arise from a pattern of racial discrimination among mortgage lenders. This paper adopts a stratification economics approach to evaluate these competing claims. Us…
Ethnic Minorities, Race, and Inequality in China: A New Perspective on Racial Dynamics
An Introduction to the volume. Special Edition: Review of Black Political Economy. December, 2012. The Political Economy of Race and Ethnicity in China
Exploring Underrepresentation: The Case of Faculty of Color in the Midwest
Additional informationNotes on contributorsCaroline Sotello Viernes TurnerCaroline Sotello Viernes Turner is associate professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration, University of Minnesota; Samuel L. Myers, Jr., is Roy Wilkins professor of human relations and social justice at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota; John W. Creswell is professor of educational psychology, University of …
Racial disproportionality in reported and substained child abuse and nelgect: An examination of systematic bias
Does Welfare Dependency Cause Female Headship? The Case of the Black Family
This paper examines empirically the economic motivation explanation for the dramatic rise in the proportion of black families headed by females, an explanation positing the attractiveness of welfare as an inducement to black women to choose to remain unmarried. Using a Granger-Sims statistical causality test, applied to Current Population Survey and Social Security Administration data for the years 1955 to 1980, we establish that black female hea…
Racialized perceptions and child neglect
Unemployment and Racial Differences in Imprisonment
Conventional wisdom about the criminal justice system suggests that extralegal factors such as race or employment status should not affect sentencing outcomes. In this paper we examine an alternative model of the relationship between imprisonment and unemployment and race. The model suggests that penal practices are shaped by the labor market conditions of a system of production and that prisons, as part of a larger set of institutions providing …
The Effect of School Poverty on Racial Gaps in Test Scores: The Case of the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests
Samuel L. Myers, Jr., Hyeoneui Kim, Cheryl Mandala, The Effect of School Poverty on Racial Gaps in Test Scores: The Case of the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Winter, 2004), pp. 81-98
The Color of Money: Bad Credit, Wealth, and Race
This article examines the myth of bad credit in the Black community. Historically, Blacks have had higher savings rates and lower use of credit than Whites. Discrimination in lending led to an aversion to credit. Later, Blacks believed their credit to be bad, even among many better qualified Black loan applicants. The authors find that there is no statistically significant difference in the average level of "bad credit" among Blacks and Whites wh…
Ethnic Minorities, Race, and Inequality in China: A New Perspective on Racial Dynamics
An Introduction to the volume. Special Edition: Review of Black Political Economy. December, 2012. The Political Economy of Race and Ethnicity in China
Presidential address—analysis of race as policy analysis
Revisiting Occupational Crowding in the United States: A Preliminary Study
In her study of occupational segregation in the United States using the 1960 Census, Barbara R. Bergmann found black males with low levels of education more concentrated in low-skill service and laborer occupations than white males and virtually excluded from higher status occupations. Utilizing a crowding index which, similar to Bergmann's, controls for the education level of the worker, this paper presents an analysis of the employment patterns…
Bad Credit and Intergroup Differences in Loan Denial Rates
Research has found wide disparities in loan denial rates among different racial/ethnic groups. Two competing explanations for these gaps arise. One argument is that these disparities result from underlying racial disparities in credit worthiness. A competing view is that the disparities arise from a pattern of racial discrimination among mortgage lenders. This paper adopts a stratification economics approach to evaluate these competing claims. Us…
Determinants of Racial Disparities in Female Incarceration Rates, 2000–2018
In The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, the National Research Council documents the large and persistent racial disparities in imprisonment that accompanied the more than quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate since the 1980s. Largely unnoticed by policy makers and opinion leaders in recent years is an unprecedented decrease in the number of African American women incarcerated at the same time that the number of white women in pr…
Analysis of racial profiling as policy analysis
Policy analysis techniques emphasize the tension between efficiency and equity in public decision-making (Friedman; 1984, 2002). This tension is aptly illustrated by the problem of racial profiling. The following case study and accompanying problem set help to underscore the difficulty of making public choices that pit cost-effectiveness or efficiency against civil liberties, civil rights and the equity goals of society. There is a growing litera…
Racial Differences in Time at Work Not Working
Racial differences in effort at work, if they exist, can potentially explain race-based wage/earnings disparities in the labor market. The authors estimate specifications of time spent on non-work activities at work by Black and White males and females with data from the American Time Use Survey. Estimates reveal that trivially small differences occur between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White males in time spent not working while on the j…
Introduction to the Issue
john a. powell a , Samuel L. Myers Jr. b , Susan T. Gooden c , Introduction to the Issue, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 7, No. 1, Plessy v. Ferguson and the Legacy of “Separate but Equal” After 125 Years (February 2021), pp. 1-17
Racial Disparities, Homeownership, and Mortgage Lending in the Post-Great Recession Period: The Case of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area
The Kerner Commission Report Fifty Years Later: Revisiting the American Dream
Susan T. Gooden, Samuel L. Myers, The Kerner Commission Report Fifty Years Later: Revisiting the American Dream, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 6, The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report (September 2018), pp. 1-17
The Production of Black Ph.D.'s in Economics at Harvard University, 1905–1955
Harvard University's Economics Department produced some of the leading African American economists between World War I and the Korean War. This essay explores the factors that contributed to this accomplishment and documents the career trajectories of the six blacks who obtained the Doctorate in Economics from Harvard University during the period 1905-1955. The analysis reveals the pivotal roles of the Rosenwald Fund, Classical High Schools, Blac…
Black-White Disparities in Test Scores: Distributional Characteristics
This paper investigates the distributional characteristics of racial differences in mathematics achievement, with particular attention to the potential influence of unexplained, and possibly unwarranted, racial differentials in rates of school suspension. It is well known that black students consistently score lower than whites on achievement tests, on average, even after controlling for family and schooling factors. Using data from the National …
Nea Presidential Address: Political Economy, Race, and Morals
Long before economics acquired the apt designation as the dismal science, it was known as political economy. Its muses, though, were not known as political economists. Instead, they often responded to titles like philosopher and of theology and jurisprudence. For example, you might recall that the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow when he penned his An Inquiry into the Nature …
Do Better Wages Reduce Crime? A Research Note
Recent research has called into question theoretical and empirical findings demonstrating a deterrent effect of punishment. Also challenged has been the view that improved employment opportunities help to reduce participation in illegitimate activities. This research note summarizes newly published econometric findings revealing that better wages and employment indeed do appear to reduce individual recidivism rates, at least in the major data set…
Changes in Black-White Income Inequality, 1968–78: A Decade of Progress
Competitive Swimming and Racial Disparities in Drowning
This paper provides compelling evidence of an inverse relationship between competitive swimming rates and drowning rates using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on fatal drowning rates and membership rates from USA Swimming, the governing organization of competitive swimming in the United States. Tobit and Poisson regression models are estimated using panel data by state from 1999-2007 separately for males, females, African Am…
If Not Reconciliation, Then What
The Australian policy of reconciliation between indigenous people and non-indigenous settlers is seen as a precursor to recent American efforts to solve its race relations problems via a policy of racial reconciliation. The empirical context of the problem of racial inequality in Australia is presented and the theoretical context of the Australian reconciliation process is discussed. Described is the concept of white privilege and explained is a …
Samuel Z. Westerfield Lecture: The Evolving Face of Capitalism and Prospects for Black Economic Empowerment
The Economics of Crime in the Urban Ghetto
This paper explores the economic aspects of participation in illegitimate activities in urban ghetto areas. The motivation for examining economic issues underlying ghetto crime and at the same time ignoring other important components of the interlocking mechanisms generating crime stems from a desire to question the efficacy of economic policy in general and labor market policy in particular in reducing crime. A resurgence of interest by the U.S.…
Changes in Black-White Income Inequality, 1968–78: A Decade of Progress
Black-White Differentials in Crime Rates
In this paper a choice-theoretic model of participation in crime is adopted to capture some of the conventional explanations for why Blacks have higher crime rates than whites. Naively, the controversial proposition that higher black crimes rates are illusory is eschewed. Instead, it is assumed for expository purposes that Blacks really are more criminal than whites
Federally Subsidized Programs for Fighting Crime in Minority Communities
In 1972, nearly $1.9 billion was spent by the federal government on the criminal justice system. This included amounts spent for police protection, courts, corrections, and law enforcement assistance. By 1977, this amount had risen to $3.6 billion. Indeed, in the United States a national war on crime had been declared. And consistently one-half of these billions of dollars of federal expenditures were in defense of the streets. Police protection …
Crime in urban areas: New evidence and results
Public Policy and the Condition of Black Family Life
The sustained well-being of a people is contingent on their ability to maintain (1) a sense of personal worth, dignity, and unity among their members, (2) familial, tribal, clan, and community relations, (3) economic well-being, and (4) the capacity to exercise political self-determination. Familial relations are of paramount importance because the family is the institution that has functioned as a source of tradition, continuity, and heritage. T…
Do Better Wages Reduce Crime? A Research Note
Recent research has called into question theoretical and empirical findings demonstrating a deterrent effect of punishment. Also challenged has been the view that improved employment opportunities help to reduce participation in illegitimate activities. This research note summarizes newly published econometric findings revealing that better wages and employment indeed do appear to reduce individual recidivism rates, at least in the major data set…
Does Welfare Dependency Cause Female Headship? The Case of the Black Family
This paper examines empirically the economic motivation explanation for the dramatic rise in the proportion of black families headed by females, an explanation positing the attractiveness of welfare as an inducement to black women to choose to remain unmarried. Using a Granger-Sims statistical causality test, applied to Current Population Survey and Social Security Administration data for the years 1955 to 1980, we establish that black female hea…
Unemployment and Racial Differences in Imprisonment
Conventional wisdom about the criminal justice system suggests that extralegal factors such as race or employment status should not affect sentencing outcomes. In this paper we examine an alternative model of the relationship between imprisonment and unemployment and race. The model suggests that penal practices are shaped by the labor market conditions of a system of production and that prisons, as part of a larger set of institutions providing …
Nea Presidential Address: Political Economy, Race, and Morals
Long before economics acquired the apt designation as the dismal science, it was known as political economy. Its muses, though, were not known as political economists. Instead, they often responded to titles like philosopher and of theology and jurisprudence. For example, you might recall that the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow when he penned his An Inquiry into the Nature …
Samuel Z. Westerfield Lecture: The Evolving Face of Capitalism and Prospects for Black Economic Empowerment
Who benefits from minority business set-asides? The case of New Jersey
Race-based remedies often are justified by evidence of prior discrimination. They work when they benefit groups previously disadvantaged. This article examines one such remedy—minority business set-asides—and its application in the award of public procurement and construction contracts by the state of New Jersey. Analyzed are contract awards to minority and non-minority/non-women-owned business enterprises in 1990, as well as in periods before, d…
The Black Underclass: Critical Essays on Race and Unwantedness
Revisiting Occupational Crowding in the United States: A Preliminary Study
In her study of occupational segregation in the United States using the 1960 Census, Barbara R. Bergmann found black males with low levels of education more concentrated in low-skill service and laborer occupations than white males and virtually excluded from higher status occupations. Utilizing a crowding index which, similar to Bergmann's, controls for the education level of the worker, this paper presents an analysis of the employment patterns…
If It Shall Seem Just and Proper: The Effect of Race and Morals On Alimony and Child Support Appeals in the District of Columbia, 1950-1980
This article tests the hypothesis that judicial arbitrariness dominated alimony or child support appeals in the pre-no-fault era by analyzing data on all alimony and child support appeals in the District of Columbia from 1950 through 1980. Censored regression analysis is used to isolate the impacts of race and morals grounds for divorce on changes in alimony and child support awards from trial to appeal. The results show large race effects but sm…
Exploring Underrepresentation: The Case of Faculty of Color in the Midwest
Additional informationNotes on contributorsCaroline Sotello Viernes TurnerCaroline Sotello Viernes Turner is associate professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration, University of Minnesota; Samuel L. Myers, Jr., is Roy Wilkins professor of human relations and social justice at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota; John W. Creswell is professor of educational psychology, University of …
If Not Reconciliation, Then What
The Australian policy of reconciliation between indigenous people and non-indigenous settlers is seen as a precursor to recent American efforts to solve its race relations problems via a policy of racial reconciliation. The empirical context of the problem of racial inequality in Australia is presented and the theoretical context of the Australian reconciliation process is discussed. Described is the concept of white privilege and explained is a …
Persistent Disparity: Race and Economic Inequality in the United States since 1945
The Color of Money: Bad Credit, Wealth, and Race
This article examines the myth of bad credit in the Black community. Historically, Blacks have had higher savings rates and lower use of credit than Whites. Discrimination in lending led to an aversion to credit. Later, Blacks believed their credit to be bad, even among many better qualified Black loan applicants. The authors find that there is no statistically significant difference in the average level of "bad credit" among Blacks and Whites wh…
Analysis of racial profiling as policy analysis
Policy analysis techniques emphasize the tension between efficiency and equity in public decision-making (Friedman; 1984, 2002). This tension is aptly illustrated by the problem of racial profiling. The following case study and accompanying problem set help to underscore the difficulty of making public choices that pit cost-effectiveness or efficiency against civil liberties, civil rights and the equity goals of society. There is a growing litera…
Presidential address—analysis of race as policy analysis
Racial disproportionality in reported and substained child abuse and nelgect: An examination of systematic bias
The Samuel Z. Westerfield Award
The Effect of School Poverty on Racial Gaps in Test Scores: The Case of the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests
Samuel L. Myers, Jr., Hyeoneui Kim, Cheryl Mandala, The Effect of School Poverty on Racial Gaps in Test Scores: The Case of the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Winter, 2004), pp. 81-98
Reconnecting disadvantaged young men. Black males left behind
Political science (37 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Economics (31 works) · Law (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Demographic economics (17 works) · Gender Studies (16 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Criminology (14 works) · Gender Studies (10 works)